Already a Ladder toward You

And isn’t it ordinary the way these hearts

Drip like lazy faucets at the center of creation

We used to be the bellybutton of the universe

We who sat at rest on dusk-yellow roads dust

Drifting aimlessly with what love the wind had

A quest pumping the titanium stomach of God

Wind making us do things making us always run

Through false doors toward we knew not what

Like good children and bad people with no belief

No sorrow being serene machines chugging up

Steep hills and coming down silent valleys like slow

Snow O isn’t it so so ordinary the way this empty

Sky stops dying long enough to remind us of our

Past our love reaches under cool stones our love

Offers us today as the apotheosis of tomorrow

Poem

This morning in Vicksburg a fine drizzle
Makes me wonder if it's raining in Berlin

Guess what else?

A troop of twentieth-century French poetry
Parades down Washington Street

Some poems wave banners the color of intention
Others are winking
For no apparent reason

They march by Highway 61 Coffeehouse
Beneath the Attic Gallery

Your sister Samantha struts before them
Thrusting a bandmaster's baton

She leads them down to the levee wall
Where they pose at the city murals
For snap-chat photos

An Artaud poem argues with a one by Breton
About the political purpose of surrealism and
Where to get the best tamales in Vicksburg

Hooray for the Apollinaire poem
Waving its blood-stained head-bandage
And hollering at the river—

Mes amis, son anniversaire aujourd'hui!

The whole silly city celebrates

These French poems will carouse downtown tonight
They'll get drunk and end up all of them
Snoring ‘til morning in the city jail

Of course I'll pay their bail
Only because it's your birthday, Miranda